rience" will have to exchange themselves every where for direct inspection and imbodiment: this, and this only, will be counted experience; and till once experience have got in, philosophy will reconcile herself to wait at the door. It is a great service, fertile in consequences, this that Scott has done; a great truth laid open by him; correspondent indeed to the sub-prose, accordingly, that has been written by any modstantial nature of the man; to his solidity and veracity even of imagination, which, with all his lively discursiveness, was the characteristic of him.

mob of gentlemen that write with ease; he did not attain Shakspeare's faculty, one perceives, of even writing fast after long preparation, but struggled while he wrote. Goethe also tells us he had nothing sent him in his sleep ;" no page of his but he knew well how it came there. It is reckoned to be the best ern. Schiller, as an unfortunate and unhealthy man, “ konnte nie fertig werden, never could get done;" the noble genius of him struggled not wisely ut too A word here as to the extempore style of writing, well, and wore his life itself heroically out. Or did which is getting much celebrated in these days. Petrarch write easily? Dante sees himself "growing Scott seems to have been a high proficient in it. His grey" over his Divine Comedy; in stern solitary rapidity was extreme, and the matter produced was death-wrestle with it, to prevail over it, and do it, if excellent considering that: the circumstances under his uttermost faculty may hence, too, it is done and which some of his novels, when he could not himself prevailed over, and the fiery life of it endures for everwrite, were dictated, are justly considered wonderful. more among men. No: creation, one would think, It is a valuable faculty this of ready writing; nay, cannot be easy; your Jove has severe pains and firefarther, for Scott's purpose it was clearly the only flames in the head out of which an armed Pallas is good mode. By much labour he could not have added struggling! As for manufacture, that is a different one guinea to his copyright; nor could the reader on matter, and may become easy or not easy, according the sofa have lain a whit more at ease. It was in all as it is taken up. Yet of manufacture too the general ways necessary that these works should be produced truth is that, given the manufacturer, it will be worthy rapidly; and, round or not, be thrown off like Giotto's in direct proportion to the pains bestowed upon it; O. But indeed, in all things, writing or other, which and worthless always, or nearly so, with no pains. a man engages in, there is the indispensablest beauty Cease, therefore, O ready-writer, to brag openly of in knowing how to get done. A man frets himself to thy rapidity and facility; to thee (if thou be in the no purpose; he has not the sleight of the trade; he is manufacturing line) it is a benefit, an increase of not a craftsman, but an unfortunate borer and bungler, wages; but to me it is sheer loss, worsening of my if he know not when to have done. Perfection is un-pennyworth: why wilt thou brag of it to me? Write attainable: no carpenter ever made a mathematically easily, by steam if thou canst contrive it, and canst accurate right-angle in the world; yet all carpenters sell it; but hide it like virtue! "Easy writing," know when it is right enough, and do not botch it, said Sheridan, "is sometimes dd hard reading.' and lose their wages by making it too tight. Too Sometimes; and always it is sure to be rather useless much pains taking speaks disease in one's mind, as reading, which indeed (to a creature of few years and well as too little. The adroit sound-minded man will much work) may be reckoned the hardest of all. endeavour to spend on each business approximately what of pains it deserves; and with a conscience void of remorse will dismiss it then. All this in favour of easy writing shall be granted, and, if need were, enforced and inculcated. And yet, on the other hand, it shall not less but more strenuously be inculcated, that in the way of writing, no great thing was ever, or will ever be done with ease, but with difficulty! Let ready writers with any faculty in them, lay this to heart. Is it with ease, or not with ease, that a man shall do his best, in any shape; above all, in this shape, justly named of "soul's travail," working in the deep places of thought, embodying the true out of the obscure and possible, environed on all sides with the uncreated false? Not so, now or at any time. The experience of all men belies it; the nature of things contradicts it. Virgil and Tacitus, were they ready writers? The whole Prophecies of Isaiah are not equal in extent to this cobweb of a review article. Shakspeare we may fancy, wrote with rapidity; but not till he had thought with intensity: long and sore had this man thought, as the seeing eye may discern well, and had dwelt and wrestled amid dark pains and throes-though his great soul is silent about all that. It was for him to write rapidly at fit intervals, being ready to do it. And herein truly lies the secret of the matter: such swiftness of mere writing, after due energy of preparation, is doubtless the right method; the hot furnace having long worked and simmered, let the pure gold flow out at one gush. It was Shakspeare's plan; no easy writer he, or he had never been a Shakspeare. Neither was Milton one of the

on

Scott's productive facility amazed every body; and set Captain Hall, for one, upon a very strange method of accounting for it without miracles; for which see his "journal," above quoted from. The Captain, or counting line for line, found that he himself had written in that journal of his almost as much as Scott, at odd hours in a given number of days; "and as for the invention," says he, "it is known that this costs Scott nothing, but comes to him of its own accord." Convenient indeed!-But for us too Scott's rapidity is great, is a proof and consequence of the solid health of the man, bodily and spiritual; great, but unmiraculous; not greater than that of many others besides Captain Hall. Admire it yet with measure. For observe always, there are two conditions in work : let me fix the quality, and you shall fix the quantity: Any man may get through work rapidly who easily satisfies himself about it. Print the talk of any man, there will be a thick octavo volume daily; making his writing three times as good as his talk, there will be the third part of a volume daily, which still is good work. To write with never such rapidity in a passable manner is indicative not of a man's genius, but of his habits; it will prove his soundness of nervous system, his practicability of mind, and in fine that he has the knack of his trade. In the most flattering view, rapidity will betoken health of mind: much also, perhaps most of all, will depend on health of body. Doubt it not, a faculty of easy writing is attainable by man! The human genius, once fairly set in this direction, will carry it far. William Cobbett, one of the healthiest of men, was a greater improviser

anew,

even than Walter Scott: his writing, considered as | blessing of God, can in no generation be swum away, to quality and quantity, of Rural Rides, Registers, but remains with us to the end. Grammars, Sermons, Peter Porcupines, Histories of Scott's career, of writing impromptu novels to buy Reformation, ever-fresh denouncements of Potatoes farms with, was not of a kind to terminate voluntarily, and Paper-money,-seems to us still more wonderful. but to accelerate itself more and more; and one sees not Pierre Bayle wrote enormous folios, one sees not on to what wise goal it could, in any case, have led him. what motive principle; he flowed on for ever, a mighty Bookseller Constable's bankruptcy was not the ruin tide of ditch-water; and even died flowing with the of Scott; his ruin was that ambition, and even false pen in his hand. But indeed the most unaccountable ambition, had laid hold of him; that his way of life ready-writer of all is, probably, the common editor was not wise. Whither could it lead? Where could of a Daily Newspaper. Considering his leading-ar-it stop? New farms there remained ever to be bought, ticles; what they treat of, how passably they are while new novels could pay for them. More and done. Straw that has been thrashed a hundred times more success but gave more and more appetite, more without wheat; ephemeral sound of a sound; such and more audacity. The impromptu writing must portent of the hour as all men have seen a hundred have waxed ever thinner; declined faster and faster times turn out inane; how a man, with merely human into the questionable category, into the condemnable, faculty, buckles himself nightly with new vigour and into the generally condemned. Already there existed, interest to this thrashed straw, nightly thrashes it in secret, everywhere a considerable opposition party; nightly gets up new thunder about it; and so witnesses of the Waverley miracles, but unable to begoes on thrashing and thundering for a considerable lieve in them, forced silently to protest against them. series of years; this is a fact remaining still to be ac- Such opposition party was in the sure case to grow; counted for, in human physiology. The vitality of and even, with the impromptu process ever going on, man is great. ever waxing thinner, to draw the world over to it. Or shall we say, Scott, among the many things he Silent protest must at length come to words; harsh carried towards their ultimatum and crisis, carried truths, backed by harsher facts of a world-popularity this of ready writing too, that so all men might better overwrought and worn out, behoved to have been see what was in it! It is a valuable consummation. spoken;-such as can be spoken now without reluc Not without results;-results, at some of which Scott tance when they can pain the brave man's heart no as a Tory politician would have greatly shuddered. more. Who knows? Perhaps it was better ordered For if once Printing have grown to be as Talk, then to be all otherwise. Otherwise, at any rate, it was. DEMOCRACY (if we look into the roots of things) is One day the Constable mountain, which seemed to not a bugbear and probability, but a certainty, and stand strong like the other rock mountains, gave sudevent as good as come! "Inevitable seems it ine." denly, as the icebergs do, a loud-sounding crack; sudBut leaving this, sure enough the triumph of ready-denly, with huge clangour, shivered itself into icewriting appears to be even now; every where the ready-writer is found bragging strangely of his readiness. In a lately translated "Don Carlos," one of the most indifferent translations ever done with any sign of ability, a hitherto unknown individual is found assuring his reader, "The reader will possibly think it an excuse when I assure him that the whole piece was completed within the space of ten weeks, that is to say, between the sixth of January and the eighteenth of March of this year (inclusive of a fortnight's interruption from over exertion;) that I often translated twenty pages a-day, and that the fifth act was the work of five days."* O hitherto unknown individual, what is it to me what time it was the work of, whether five days or five decades years? The only question is, How hast thou done it?-So, however, it stands; the genius of Extempore irresistibly lording it, advancing on us like ocean-tides, like Noah's deJages-of ditch-water! The prospect seems one of the lamentablest. To have all Literature swum away from us in watery Extempore, and a spiritual time of Noah supervene? That surely is an awful reflection, worthy of dyspeptic Matthew Bramble in a London fog! Be of comfort, O splenetic Matthew; it is not Literature they are swimming away; it is only Book-publishing and Book-selling. Was there not a Literature before Printing or Faust of Mentz, and yet en wrote extempore? Nay, before Writing or Cadof Thebes, and yet men spoke extempore? Litethe thought of thinking Souls; this, by the

dust; and sank, carrying much along with it. In one day, Scott's high-heaped money-wages became fairymoney and nonentity; in one day the rich man and lord of land saw himself penniless, landless, a bankrupt among creditors.

It was a hard trial. He met it proudly, bravely,— like a brave proud man of the world. Perhaps there had been a prouder way still to have owned honestly that he was unsuccessful then, all bankrupt, Broken, in the world's goods and repute; and to have turned elsewhither for some refuge. Refuge did lie elsewhere; but it was not Scott's course, or fashion of mind, to seek it there. To say, Hitherto I have been all in the wrong, and this my fame and pride, now broken, was an empty delusion and spell of accursed witchcraft! It was difficult for flesh and blood! He said, I will retrieve myself, and make my point good yet, or die for it. Silently, like a proud strong man, he girt himself to the Hercules' task, of removing rubbish-mountains, since that was it; of paying large ransoms by what he could still write and sell. In his declining years too; misfortune is doubly and trebly unfortunate that befalls us then. Scott fell to his Hercules' task like a very man, and went on with it unweariedly; with a noble cheerfulness, while his life-strings were cracking, he grappled with it, and wrestled with it, years long, in death-grips, strength to strength;-and it proved the stronger; and his life and heart did crack and break: the cordage of a most strong heart! Over these last writings of Scott, his Napoleons, Demonologies, and Scotch Histories, and the rest criticism, finding still much to wonder at, much to commend, will arlos," a Dramatic Poem from the German utter no word of blame; this one word only, Wo is Mannheim and London, 1837. me! The noble warhorse that once laughed at the

shaking of the spear, how is he doomed to toil himself the same symmetry of form, though those limbs are dead, dragging ignoble wheels! Scott's descent was rigid which were once so gracefully elastic;-but that like that of a spent projectile; rapid, straight down; yellow mask, with pinched features, which seems to -perhaps mercifully so. It is a tragedy, as all life mock life rather than emulate it, can it be the face that is; one proof more that Fortune stands on a restless was once so full of lively expression? I will not look globe; that Ambition, literary, warlike, politic, pecu- the latest idea she had formed of her mother is as she on it again. Anne thinks her little changed; because niary, never yet profited any man. appeared under circumstances of extreme pain. Mine If I write go back to a period of comparative ease. which I should rather write up if I could." long in this way, I shall write down my resolution,

velled as the road from London to Edinburgh. His had commenced retiring before the assault was made; subjects and routes are as common as stage-coaches, and this appears at least probable. Finding that his -Milan; Florence; Leghorn; Pisa; Genoa; Naples, column paused under the fire of the few guns left, Nawith its sight-seeing excursions, Vesuvius, Pompeii, poleon and his generals cheered them on in person. Herculaneum, and Pæstum; then Rome; and lastly, The French did not get across until the Austrians were Venice. too far on their retreat to make the affair decisive, but soon enough to seize some of the guns in the rear; guns that the Austrians probably intended to sacrifice. who affirmed he was an eye-witness. Certainly, after "I give you this account as it was given to me by one seeing the bridge, I shall not believe that one army crossed it in face of another that was not completely disorganized. Au reste, it was sufficiently hazardous to attempt it in the face of a couple of efficient guns; and the personal intrepidity of the generals would be abun dantly apparent even under such circumstances. It was probably a gallant thing, though by no means the thing we are accustomed to believe it."

In the hands of the generality of men, all this would be insufferably tedious; for guide-books give us a catalogue of every thing that has been, or is to be seen; and numberless tourists have recorded their general impressions. But Mr. Cooper is not a general or commonplace man. He may be a harsh, searching, close, disparaging person; but he is clear, critical, and true; and, however unpleasant such a man's judgments may be, they are more easily carped at than set aside. That he is disposed to overvalue himself, and to undervalue others, is unquestionable; but there is character in Egomet-I myself; and there is a hard headed kind of proof about him, which convinces the reason. In addition to this, he has natural faculties of observation trained by long exercise to a high degree of excellence; he has habits of analysis and reflection; and both these qualities enable him to see deeper into things than most other people. He has an expansion of mind, arising from habits of extensive speculation, which lifts him far above the vulgar absurdities or well-bred emptiness of the herd. Lastly, if not a poetical genius, he has at least the skill which arises from long practice; so that this matter, whatever it be, is always distinctly and effectively put before the reader. To all which may be added, his nativity, which gives him to see European usages with Ameri

can eyes.

Hence, these Excursions in Italy contain much that interests; they throw a new light upon several questions of history, and set various matters of received opinion on manners, art, and nature, in a novel point of view. See how the romance of the battle of the Bridge of Lodi melts in the crucible of his critical

mind.

"We were anxious, of course, to examine the celebrated bridge. I found, however, that the people on the spot did not deem the battle so serious an affair as it is usually imagined; and as I have heard, on pretty good authority, that several of Napoleon's battles were fought principally in the bulletins, I went doubting to the river. The stream, you know, is the Adda; it is straggling, and a good deal disfigured by sand-banks. The bridge, six or eight hundred feet in length, is narrow; and the land opposite the town is a low meadow. A few houses on that side mark the approach to the bridge, and the buildings of the town do the same thing on the other. As it would be physically impossible to cross this bridge under the fire of batteries of any force that were in the least well managed-and as the Austrian artillery, moreover, if not the very best, is considered among the best in Europe,-I was a good deal staggered with the appearance of things. The result of all my inquiries on the spot was as follows, and I presume it is not far from the truth.

We must leave a description of Florence, not so artistical and antiquarian as that of John Bell, but still graphic, and perhaps more lifelike from its contrast of the past and present; as well as on account of Mr. Cooper's interview with the Grand Duke, who seems to have tickled the Republican exceedingly. We must pass over to Leghorn, Genoa, and Pisa, with a rational disquisition as to whether the celebrated Leaning Tower of the latter was intended to lean or not. Leave me also Naples and its Lazzaroni; with the various artificial antique and natural attractions within its range. Let us get on to the first view of Rome. Mr. Cooper has no antiquarian prejudices about him, and perhaps is not exactly a scholar; but he has the spirit of scholarship, and evidently felt more, on his first approach to the Eternal City, than it will be seen, of the monumental ruins, to which althose who cant more. Here is his picture; he speaks, lusion is made in another article.

"I was too impatient to await the slow movements of the vetturino, and hurried on alone, afoot, as soon as my breakfast was swallowed. Passing through a gateway, I soon found myself at a point whence I overlooked much of the surrounding scenery. Such a moment can occur but once in a whole life.

"The road ran down a long declivity, in a straight line, until it reached the plain, when it proceeded more diagonally, winding towards its destination. But that plain! Far and near it was a waste, treeless, almost shrubless, and with few buildings besides ruins. Long broken lines of arches, the remains of aqueducts, were visible in the distance; and here and there a tower rendered the solitude more eloquent, by irresistibly provoking a comparison between the days when they were built and tenanted, and the present hour. At the foot of the mountain, though the road diverged, there was a lane of smaller ruins that followed the line of the descent for miles in an air line. This line of ruins was broken at intervals, but there were still miles of it to be distinctly traced, and to show the continuity that had once existed from Albano to the very walls of Rome. This was the Appian Way; and the ruins were those of the tombs that once lined its sides-the 'stop "The Austrian army was in retreat, and had thrown traveller' of antiquity. These tombs were on a scale the Adda between itself and its enemy. Napoleon ar-proportioned to the grandeur of the seat of empire, rived in pursuit. Ascertaining that the stream might be forded, he sent a detachment with that object towards a flank of his enemy; and the Austrians retired, leaving a force to protect their retreat at the bridge. Anxious to strike a blow, Napoleon decided to force this point immediately, and ordered the attack. My informant affirmed that most of the Austrian artillery

and they altogether threw those of Pompeii into the shade; although the latter, as a matter of course, are in much the best preservation. There were near Albano, several circular crumbling towers, large enough to form small habitations for the living: a change of destiny, as I afterwards discovered, that has actually befallen several of them nearer the city.

"Rome itself lay near the confines of the western | vious impression. Pushing aside the door in common view. The distance (fourteen or fifteen miles) and the use, I found myself in the nave of the noblest temple even surface of the country rendered the town indis- in which any religious rites were ever celebrated. tinct, but it still appeared regal and like a capital. "I walked unconsciously about a hundred feet up Domes rose up above the plane of roofs in all direc- the nave, and stopped. From a habit of analyzing tions; and that of St. Peter's, though less imposing buildings, I counted the paces as I advanced, and knew than fancy had portrayed it, was comparatively grand how far I was within the pile. Still, men seemed dwinand towering. It looked like the Invalides seen from dled into boys, seen at the further extremity. One who Neuilly, the distinctness of the details and the gilding was cleaning a statue of St. Bruno at the height of an apart. Although I could discern nothing at that dis-ordinary church-steeple, stood on the shoulder of the tance that denoted ruins, the place had not altogether figure, whose size did not appear disproportioned, and the air of other towns. The deserted appearance of could just rest his arm on the top of its head. Some the surrounding country, the broken arches of the marble cherubs, that looked like children, were in high aqueducts, and perhaps the recollections, threw around relief against a pier near me; and laying my hand on it a character of sublime solitude. The town had not, the hand of one of them, I found it like that of an infant in itself, an appearance of being deserted, but the en- in comparison. All this aided the sense of vastness. virons caused it to seem cut off from the rest of the The baldacchino, or canopy of bronze, which is raised world." over the great altar, filled the eye no more than a pulpit in a common church; and yet I knew its summit was as lofty as half the height of the spire of Trinity, New York, or about a hundred and thirty feet, and essentially higher than the tower. I looked for a marble throne that was placed at the remotest extremity of the building, also as high as a common church tower, a sort of poetical chair for the Popes; and it seemed as distant as a cavern or mountain.

St. Peter's has been often described, but it receives distinctness and certainty from Mr. Cooper's mode of handling.

"We drove to the Hôtel de Paris, entirely across the city, near the Porta del Popolo, and took lodgings. I ordered dinner; but, too impatient to restrain my curiosity, as there was still an hour of daylight, I called a laquais de place, and, holding little P- by the hand, sallied forth. Where will the signore go" asked the laquais, as soon as we were in the street. To St. Pe

ter's.'

·

"In my eagerness to proceed, I looked neither to the right nor to the left. We went through crooked and narrow streets, until we came to a bridge lined with

statues.

The stream beneath was the Tiber. It was

and

"To me there was no disappointment. Every thing appeared as vast as feet and inches could make it; as I stood gazing at the glorious pile, the tears forced themselves from my eyes. Even little P was oppressed with the sense of the vastness of the place; for he clung close to my side, though he had passed half his life in looking at sights, and kept murmuring, "Qu'est-ce que c'est ? qu'est-ce que c'est ? église ?"

EMPERORS AND REPUBLICS.

Est-ce une

full, turbid, swift, sinuous; and it might be three hundred feet wide, or perhaps not quite so wide as the Seine at Paris at the same season. The difference, "An intelligent Swiss who is now here, and who frehowever, is not material; and each is about half as quently accompanies me in these morning rides, exwide as the Thames above London Bridge on a full claimed triumphantly the other day, You will find, tide, which is again three-fourths of the width of the on examining Rome in detail, that all the works of luxHudson at Albany. A large round castellated edifice, ury and of a ferocious barbarity, belonged to the Emwith flanking walls and military bastions, faced the pire, and those of use to the Republic. The latter, bridge: this was the tomb of Adrian, converted into a moreover, are the only works that seem to be impercitadel by the name of the Castle of St. Angelo, an ishable.' After allowing for the zeal of a Republican, angel in bronze surmounted the tower. Turning to the there is some truth in this; though the works of the left, we followed the river until a street led us from its Republic, by their nature, being drains and aqueducts, windings; and presently I found myself standing at the &c. are more durable than those above ground. Still it foot of a vast square, with colonnades on a gigantic is a good deal to have left an impression of lasting usescale sweeping in half circles on each side of me, two fulness, to be contrasted with the memorials and barof the most beautiful fountains I had ever seen throw-barity of vain temples and bloody arenas.” ing their waters in sheets down their sides between these, and the façade of St. Peter's forming the background. A noble Egyptian obelisk occupied the centre of the area.

Pre

"Every one had told me I should be disappointed in the apparent magnitude of this church; but I was not. To me it seemed the thing it is, possibly because some pains had been taken to school the eye. Switzerland often misled me in both heights and distances, but a ship or an edifice rarely does so. viously to seeing Switzerland, I had found nothing to compare with such a nature, and all regions previously known offered no rules to judge by; but I had now seen too many huge structures not to be at once satisfied that this was the largest of them all.

"The laquais would have me stop to admire some of Michael Angelo's sublime conceptions; but I pressed forward. Ascending the steps, I threw out my arms to embrace one of the huge half-columns of the façade, not in a fit of sentimentalism, but to ascertain its diameter, which was gigantic, and helped the pre

The reader will take these only as specimens, not as selections. The book is full of passages equally distinguished for peculiarity, shrewdness, and reality.

From the Athenæum.

PRINTERS' WAGES.

ters," drawn up by Mr. Day, of the printing establishThe first paper read was "On the Wages of Prinment of Messrs. Clowes.

The workmen employed in the business of printing, from the author's MS.; 2. Pressmen-3. Machinemen, are-1. Compositors, or those who arrange the type ed types. From the introduction of printing into this or those who actually print the paper from the arrangcountry, in 1456 to 1774, little is known of the rate of tors received 20s. for a week's labour. About this pepayment. In the latter year, it appears that composi